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2014 Emerging Writers Fellows Reading

We were shining the spotlight on our nine Center for Fiction fellows. These writers were chosen from hundreds of applicants to recieve a grant, space to work in our Writers' Studio, as well as opportunities to work with and meet editors and agents. The evening featured readings by all nine of our writers: Lisa Armstrong, Cedrick Mendoza-Tolentino, Stephanie Miki Arndt, Dwyer Murphy,Zeeva Bukai, Belal Rafiq, Elysha Chang, Wil Weitzel, andSu-Yee Lin. For more information on this program click here.

The Center for Fiction Fellowships for NYC Early Career Writers are made possible through a grant from The Jerome Foundation with matching funds from individual donors.

Lisa Armstrong is a Brooklyn-based journalist with credits in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast and other publications and websites. Born in New York, she grew up in Nairobi, Kenya and travels frequently on assignment. She has won awards from the National Press Club and The American Society of Journalists and Authors for her reporting. She teaches at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and is currently working on her first novel.

Stephanie Miki Arndt is a freelance writer and editor from Kobe, Japan. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a BA in Writing and received her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her fiction has most recently appeared in the Colorado Review and she is currently working on her first novel.

Zeeva Bukai was born in Israel and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her fiction has appeared in WomenArts Quarterly Journal, Calyx, Lilith Magazine, The Jewish Quarterly, Heeb Magazine and the Brooklyn Review. She has attended the Sewanee Writer’s Conference and Hannah Tinti’s One Story Master Class. She is a graduate of the MFA program in fiction at Brooklyn College where she taught writing. Zeeva has also taught composition and literature at Adelphi University and is the Academic Support Specialist at Empire State College, SUNY in Brooklyn. She is currently at work on a novel.

Elysha Chang is a writer from Virginia who lives in Brooklyn. Her work can be found in The Literarian, Park Slope Reader and Her Royal Majesty. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 2011 and is currently at work on a collection of stories.

Su-Yee Lin is a writer of short fiction with an MFA in Fiction from UMass Amherst and a BA in Literary Arts from Brown University. She was a 2012-2013 Fulbright Fellow in China, researching Chinese folktales for a collection of short stories exploring place and identity, and recently completed a residency at Writers Omi at Ledig House. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Tor.com, Fairy Tale Review, A Cappella Zoo, Interfictions, and elsewhere. Originally from Long Island, she currently lives in Queens.

Cedrick Mendoza-Tolentino graduated from Columbia University with honors from the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program and from Cornell Law School. He has had work published in Liars' League New York, Joyland, Slow Trains and Plain Spoke. He is currently working on a novel.

Dwyer Murphy grew up on the South Coast of Massachusetts and lives in Brooklyn. His writing has appeared in Guernica and Paris Review Daily. He is currently a reader for A Public Space and at work on his first novel.

Belal Rafiq grew up in the Washington DC Metro Area. He has been writing fiction for as long as he can remember, publishing his first piece when he was seventeen. He recently received his MFA from Columbia University where he was a Fiction Fellow. He currently lives in Harlem, and is at work on a collection of poetry, a collection of stories, and a novel.

Wil Weitzel received a PhD in comparative literature from Harvard University and lives in New York. He has just completed a first story collection devoted to forests, deserts, and oceans and is at work on a novel set in alpine Pakistan showcasing mountain ecologies and contemporary human relations to wild spaces. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Southwest Review, New Orleans Review, Chautauqua, Conjunctions, and The Kenyon Review, and he was nominated in 2013 for a Pushcart Prize.